The Perils of Persiflage
by jomiddlemarch
Summary: The prodigal returns. Farce ensues. All that is missing is some deus ex machina.


Tippet was barking so ferociously Jed thought the window-panes would shatter in their mullions; she was frantic, but he couldn't quite tell with what—the distinction among excitement, fear, happiness was lost in the amazing din she created. She was so very loud he had trouble deciding which way to seek her, though it was clear she had descended to the wards to wreak her auricular mayhem and he could only hope she had endeared herself half as well to McBurney as she had to her owner, otherwise the CMO might justifiably tell Jed he needed to find her someplace else to live or simply shout "Get rid of her! Now, I don't care how!" McBurney had been more at ease the past few weeks as Mary had encouraged and chivvied the staff to follow the new chief's elaborate and often incomprehensible orders; this could work in Tippet's favor or the man be might be spoiling for a fight, any impetus to erupt. Tippet was certainly supplying ample reason, Jed thought, but she was ordinarily the best of companions, exactly what Mary had intended and he'd noticed McBurney casting a fond eye upon her in the evening, petting her gently if she paused while trotting to regain her master's side. He must find her and discover what on earth had possessed her, for she sounded like nothing else but Cerebus, the guard-dog of Hades itself, and he couldn't think for the noise.

Jed looked in the larger ward, but though the men grimaced with the clamor or their own suffering, deaf to all else, and the nuns attempted their traditional calm, their pale faces showing their variable response, Sister Mary Helen wincing with each crescendo, there was no evidence of Tippet or what instigated her. The heavy walnut doors to the library were closed and he knew well enough that they would have muffled her better; it must be the small ward, the one before the room Miss Green tended her Confederates in. It had had many uses before McBurney came, Summers more lax, more flexible about its designation, but now it only held whatever cases were most uncommon, so that the majority of men could be treated in the same way, what McBurney believed to be an efficiency. Jed had argued that given their resources, it was the least reasonable system imaginable, but McBurney had stood firm, his tone cold and intended to cow his inferiors. As Jed neither considered himself McBurney's subordinate nor was he, the son of fiery Ezekiel Foster, protégé of the great Piorry, easily intimidated, the chief's approach had been wasted upon him but he had learned the Clayton McBurney only dug in his heels more when he was challenged. Tippet had not learned that lesson.

"Foster!" Captain McBurney positively howled, a rival to the spaniel; Jed thought he might only have waited for the CMO to lose his temper entirely and then proceeded in the direction of the man-made maelstrom rather than seeking out Tippet. He purposefully slowed his pace, unwilling to let the other man take credit for hurrying him along. There was nothing that suggested a medical crisis was afoot and he smelled neither smoke nor brimstone. Mary had had less concern about the ramifications of arriving as if she were fleet-footed Atalanta incarnate despite her pinafore and worn, brown boots, and only narrowly averted a collision with Jed where he stood stock-still just beyond the room's threshold, surveying a scene that defied the imagination.

"Sakes alive!" Mary exclaimed breathlessly. He didn't spare her a glance, transfixed by the tableau before him, but he felt her beside him and he heard the way she tried to return to her usual serenity, the soft, panting exhalations she made, the sound of her smoothing her full woolen skirt quieter than if she'd worn silk or taffeta.

"Foster!" McBurney yelled again, his eyes darting about, looking like a loosed Bedlamite despite his sober uniform without a thread out of place. How much louder, how much more unhinged would he become when he finally espied Jed in the room?

"Have you ever seen the like, Mary?" Jed said unnecessarily circumspectly. "Have you any idea what's brought us to this?"

 _This_ was the escalating canine argument between Tippet at the bedside of a man Jed vaguely recalled operating on within the week, a weedy private, certainly not more than a corporal, and her opponent, a decent-sized pug in a travelling basket lined with striped mauveine silk. The pug's owner was clearly doting, as she wore a many-flounced dress in the same expensive fabric, and was the source of a series of trilled, soprano cries that may have represented words but which registered as an aria of dismay. She was a middle-aged woman, fair and plump, and he had an idea of what she looked like in her youth, as she was surrounded by three similarly featured young girls in a paler shade but trimmed with ribbon and braid dyed the same richly vivid violet their relative—their mother or less likely, an aunt—affected. They made a chorus of sorts of anxious cooing and clucking, the occasional treble shriek. Jed couldn't help thinking, just for a moment, how much he appreciated Mary's steady contralto tones, the rounded clarity of her vowels when she sought to soothe, the crisp enunciation of a good quality New England ladies' academy when she was dealing with an emergency. He saw Anne Hastings at the periphery of the room, Byron Hale beside her, his goateed jaw hanging open as he regarded the room, a sensory jumble of the intense aniline mauveine and the shrill yapping of the dogs. Anyone of greater wisdom—Samuel Diggs and Henry Hopkins, Matron Brannan, even the Misses Green, was absent. He must take up Tippet and find a way to create order from the chaos before him but he couldn't without Mary's assistance, but she had not answered yet.

"Mary? Please—you must have some idea!"

"I think it must be Mr. Squivers," she replied. "Private Squivers, that is. I sent a telegram earlier when I wasn't sure he would recover, to Mrs. Squivers. It would seem she has arrived."

"Foster!" McBurney was positively Vesuvian, there was no time to waste. "What is the meaning of this… _menagerie_?"

"'Once more unto the breach?'" he murmured to Mary, gesturing that she should walk into the coalescing melee with him.

"Captain McBurney, I hardly think two dogs constitutes a menagerie. They're not even very big dogs," Jed replied. He felt Mary's glancing touch on his forearm suggesting he abandon this argument and recognized the wisdom of it regarding Clayton McBurney's imminent apoplexy, such a difficult ailment to treat…

"Mr. Squibbers! Oh! Mr. Squibbers, no, no!" Mrs. Squivers declared as Jed made his way to the bed of the unfortunate soldier.

"Tippet, enough," he said firmly. There was an infernal racket but the little spaniel was familiar with his voice and his baritone had less competition. He had no effect, however, on the pug or any Squivers female.

"Mother, please. Can't you do something?" the patient said. His patient, though Jed didn't recall him, not even the expression Mary had had when she'd asked him to operate.

"Why, I'm trying, dear. How could I know the hospital would have a guard dog? Assigned to you? That nice nurse who sent the telegram didn't say to expect that, only that we must hurry. And so we have, your sisters and I, and I can hardly think what to say for all the hullabaloo," Mrs. Squivers replied. Jed would have laughed at the description of Tippet as a guard dog but McBurney had not regained one iota of his usual tenuous equilibrium yet.

"Mrs. Squivers, I beg your pardon," Mary interjected. "I'm Nurse Phinney, the Head Nurse, I sent the telegram and here is Dr. Foster, Private Squivers's surgeon. I'm afraid his dog, Dr. Foster's dog, has taken it in her head to add her services to her master's. Private Squivers couldn't have more devoted care, I should think, not until he returns home with you."

"Oh! I suppose it all makes sense. And I have gathered you've made sure my boy has gotten special care, because of your previous connection. His sisters and I, we do appreciate it," the older woman replied. Jed was puzzled now, he could afford to be since minutes had passed without an eruption from McBurney. "Your previous connection?" What could she mean? At least he could entertain the question as the noise was blessedly beginning to abate.

"Nurse Mary?" he inquired. Let her answer every question she could think of—she was thorough and he expected he would appreciate a detailed explanation.

"Dr. Foster, you recall, Private Squivers worked among us for some time, before he answered the call and enlisted. He is, was, a medical cadet. That was why I asked for you to take such care with his injuries, his eyes and his right hand. The loss of either would be an end to his career," Mary elaborated, telling him more with her eyes, that little flutter of her lashes, the way she tilted her head. It was feckless Squivers of those balmy spring days, Peregrine or Perkin, whom he'd shunted off onto Mary, dead weight until he fell in a dead faint and then disappeared… Jed hadn't bothered to ask where or when, assuming Mary had taken care of it, not really minding how as long as he hadn't be required to do anything.

"Oh yes! Peregrine Squivers! Can't risk the loss to medical science," he remarked in a jocular tone that made Mary's eyes brighten.

"He's Percival. Percival Gawaine Squivers the Third. Like the knight—so brave and good, all courageous ideals. Mr. Squibbers!" Mrs. Squivers corrected.

"Madam?" Was the woman addled? Could she not even pronounce her own surname- or was it a speech impediment?

"Oh, that's our pug. Mr. Squibbers. Dear Percival is so dreadfully fond of him, his sisters and I thought it would be just the thing to bring him along. So healing."

"Mother. Can't you see the hospital is no place for Mr. Squibbers? I can't think it suits the girls either," Percival called from his bed, his voice slightly muffled by the extensive dressing on his face. It seemed he found the prospect of his mother's pet more dreadful than fond, based on his tone if not his expression.

Jed had saved both eyes, though it had taken the better part of a day, and the scarring, on the left maxilla especially, would be extensive and unable to be entirely concealed with a beard. The Percival Squivers of his memory was not the type of man he'd expect to be able to grow an impressive set of whiskers in any case. The hand, too, that had taken another two hours, but the potential for fully mobility had been retained. Mary had brought him his dinner on a tray that night, in his room, and told him to go straight to bed with such affectionate command he'd enjoyed surprising herself with his immediate simple agreement. He'd ignored the urge for a mildly salacious comment and had reaped the benefit of his rare restraint as she'd squeezed his hand when before she left, let her eyes rest on him openly and said "Sleep well, Jedediah," in an intimate timbre better than the caress. It appeared she had done well by both of them that day, although with McBurney glowering at the assemblage of hoopskirts and Mr. Squibbers whining, it was hard to grasp _in toto_ at the moment.

"I don't care beans for that opinion, not a single old red-eyed bean! It suits us just fine, Percival. We are so glad to see you and perhaps in a few days, we may even take you home!" This was the sister closest to her mother, perhaps emboldened by her mother's equanimity or the liveliness of the dogs.

"Petronilla! Have a little respect, speaking so to an Union soldier," retorted another of the girls, whose old-fashioned clusters of curls peeped from the brim of her bonnet, easily accessible to the third sister to took the first opportunity to pull them in response and elicit a squeal that startled poor Tippet into a sentinel bark, easily quieted by Jed shifting closer to her, quickly enough, he hoped, that McBurney's temper would not rise again like the Nile flooding her banks.

"Ow! Penelope, that hurt! Mother!"

"Parthenia, Penelope, Petronilla, birds in their little nests agree! You'll disturb dear Percival," their mother remonstrated. The humor of the Misses Squivers's plosive appellations was not lost on anyone, even McBurney, whose scowl now had the element of a mask; he'd shown a peculiar volatility since his arrival and today was no different. Hale gave a snort audible across the whole room at the disquisition of Mrs. Squivers and Anne was laughing outright. Even Mary could not hide the smile the names provoked, the absurdity of the whole episode coming to a head even as Mr. Squibbers, most certainly a pug par excellence, had dozed off in his basket and was snoring gently.

"I do think Private Squivers may benefit from some rest. Perhaps you and your daughters might retire to the visitors' parlor and have some tea?" Mary said politely.

"I do declare, I'm parched and a nice cup of tea wouldn't go amiss, Nurse Phinney. Say goodbye to your brother, girls," Mrs. Squivers replied, turning so quickly Jed had to jump back to avoid being the victim of her hoopskirt.

"Sleep well, Percy. We'll be back soon," the girls chorused. McBurney breathed, "Saints preserve us!" but with far less venom that his earlier exclamations.

"Goodbye, Petronilla. Goodbye, Parthenia. Goodbye, Penelope. I didn't hear Pru before, is she here?" Private Squivers quavered from the bed. Maybe a practice in Saratoga, treating wealthy women with the vapors, Jed thought, he might do well there with his experience…

"Oh, no. We left our little Prudence at home," his mother said serenely, reassured that her boy was well-treated, that a cup of tea awaited, that Mr. Squibbers dreamt his canine dreams unmolested in his silken nest.

"I should say you did," Jed muttered, loud enough for Mary to hear and McBurney. The CMO was temporarily appeased and Jed hoped that they would not need to have a lengthy conversation about crating Tippet once the estimable Mr. Squibbers and his entourage departed Mansion House's confines; McBurney strode from the room, in search of some conundrum or contretemps and the Squivers women, led by their mother, were headed out to the parlor as Mary had directed them. She went to follow and he laid a hand on her elbow, the lightest touch all that was needed to make her pause.

"It's an exaltation of larks and a murmuration of swallows, a quiver of cobras…What do you think, Mary, a Squivers of what?" he asked, grinning widely. "Porcupines, perchance?"

"Oh, no. Far too wily and silent. Pigeons, I should think, a Squivers of pigeons, all ruffled feathers and pecking. And all wanting their tea, or whatever I can find for them, so you must let me go, Jed. I shan't risk the wrath of Mr. Squibbers a second time. Or my best snood's chance with Parthenia's right hook," she countered neatly. Oh, she had a mouth to be kissed, but not now, however much he wanted to.

"I don't know. I thought Petronilla posed the greater danger, she doesn't care a bean. Off with you, then, if you promise to find me later and recount tea-time," he said, letting his hand drop, a little disconcerted when she caught it in her own, without any question of intent, except of what she intended.

"I promise. Shouldn't you practice some medicine now? It would make a pleasant change," she said saucily, letting go of his hand. He nodded and watched her go, seeing what she did not—her uncommon beauty, her bewitching wit, Plum scampering across the hall to accompany her, the familiar calico at her heels, the imminence of Mr. Squibbers's next pitched battle and the likely (feline) victor.

"Come, Tippet," he said, walking the other way to the music of Plum's growing hiss. "Let's leave well enough alone, you've gotten into enough mischief already today and it's not ten o'clock."


End file.
